‘Baby Assassins: Nice Days’ Delivers a Highpoint for an Already Great Franchise

Action fans have been eating pretty well these past few years, and those open to subtitled thrills have been feasting even better. Over half of our best action movies of 2023 aren’t in English, and the same goes for our best action picks for 2022. The first two Baby Assassins films secured spots on their respective lists, and now it looks like the third film in the franchise, Baby Assassins: Nice Days, is going to do the same. The whole team is back together, both in front of and behind the camera, and the result is arguably the series highpoint delivering stellar fights, real emotional beats, goofy humor, and an unexpectedly darker tone.

Mahiro (Saori Izawa) and Chisato (Akari Takaishi) are used to slacking off between jobs, whether the minimum wage gigs or their murder assignments, but for the first time ever, the pair have found themselves on a proper vacation. Assassin contracts wait for no man or woman, though, so when a nearby opportunity arises they begrudgingly head into the small seaside city of Miyazaki to kill a dude. They arrive just in time to find their target facing an impending death at the hands of a freelance killer named Kaede (Sosuke Ikematsu) who’s counting his way towards one hundred and fifty assassinations. Here’s hoping Mahiro and Chisato don’t end up among them.

Coming just one year after 2023’s Baby Assassins: Two Babies, this third film in the franchise — soon to get a TV series too! — might just be its highpoint. Writer/director Yugo Sakamoto once again blends a fun tale of friendship with some highly entertaining and beautifully crafted action beats. Baby Assassins: Nice Days is a more serious film, from the more violently inclined antagonist to the themes of impending maturity and “adulthood,” but that darker tone allows our heroes to see their own mortality in some affecting ways — and to then shoot it in its dumb face.

In a move that could either upset series fans or find some new ones, Sakamoto noticeably tones down the slacker comedy that was a big part of the first two movies. Speaking solely for myself and as one of those slacker comedy fans, this shift works precisely because we’ve been watching Mahiro and Chisato grow throughout the films. They found strength in each other, they found interests that fueled them, and now they’re realizing that there’s a cost associated with investing so much of yourself into your work. Kaede is a brutal force to be reckoned with, but he’s also a cautionary tale for the young women.

Of course, none of that is to suggest that Baby Assassins: Nice Days isn’t a fun time with its own share of laughs. Mahiro and Chisato are still goofballs, and Izawa and Takaishi are still having a blast bringing these two to life. Their chemistry remains off the charts, and they’re just as comfortable trading banter and casual asides as they are moving in perfect sync while on the job. The cleanup crew from the last film returns too, this time with no real on their light romance, but Tomo Nakai and Atom Mizuishi still bring the smiles. We also get a pair of older assassins along for the ride in Iruka (Atsuko Maeda) and Riku (Mondo Otani), who balance a more experienced professionalism with some humorous verbal disagreements as to how they go about things.

After our two “babies,” though, it’s Ikematsu who steals your attention. The character is a fierce but uncomfortably charismatic foe, and while we maybe get a bit more time on his background than is needed, it all works to inform his single-minded obsession and arguable lack of empathy. It’s also what makes his face-offs with Mahiro so strong — he’s an unstoppable force, but she might just be the immovable object.

To that point — and really, the action is ultimately the point of all of this — Sakamoto and legendary fight choreographer Kensuke Sonomura up their already impressive game from the first two films to make Baby Assassins: Nice Days truly stand out from the pack. Where the previous entries mainly kept the fights as bookends for slacker comedy antics, here the action is more frequent and ultimately more serious. Mahiro and Kaede face off more than once, and both are forced to realize they may have met their match.

All of the action here shines, and even Takaishi’s Chisato gets to taste more of the kinetic thrills this time, but it’s Izawa and Ikematsu whose brawls raise the bar again and again. The pair feel perfectly matched and effortlessly in sync as they trade hits, and it makes their fights both entertaining and suspenseful. Sonomura choreographs action like great artists paint, sing, etc., and that’s because Sonomura is a great artist. Check out any of the films he’s served as action director for, and be sure to seek out his two directorial efforts two (Hydra, 2019; Bad City, 2022), both straight up bangers that show him as one of today’s most exciting voices in action cinema. Here he crafts fights, chase scenes, and shootouts with an eye for clarity, style, and thrills, and while he’s open to a degree of playfulness in regard to the physics of it all, a real awareness of mortality hangs heavy over the fighters. It’s beautiful stuff.

Baby Assassins: Nice Days might lose some fans due to its tempering of slacker comedy and playful downtime, but honestly, it might gain some for the very same reason. The important thing is that it’s another fantastic example of true artisans working hand in hand to keep these characters and this world going with fun, love, and thrilling action beats. Now when can I watch the damn TV series?!

The 2024 edition of the New York Asian Festival runs July 12th to July 28th. Follow along with our coverage here. And the 28th edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival runs July 18th to August 4th in beautiful Montreal, Quebec. Follow along with our coverage here.